Born in Shujen, Province of Riga, Russia, he studied there under Professor Rosé of the Imperial Academy of Petrograd. He then was reported to have travelled with Rosé to London and Paris. In France he spent two years then went on to Belgium and Holland. He studied under Prof. Allebé at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Amsterdam, Holland, and was married in that country. He came to Canada with his wife in 1907 and farmed for a time in the west and about a year later settled in Toronto. Among the many subjects he painted were horses and he did them exceptionally well. His work was reproduced in magazines like the Canadian Magazine and Saturday Night, and others. By 1919, he was an associate of the Royal Canadian Academy, and shortly after its founding in 1925 he became a member of the Canadian Society of Painters in Water Colour.
In 1934, Lapine was struck by an automobile and injured. The Star Weekly almost a month later announced that a committee had been formed headed by Sir Wyly Grier who was then President of the Royal Canadian Academy, to organize a sale of paintings contributed by artists in Ontario to help pay for Lapine’s medical bills. L.A.C. Panton, President of the Ontario Society of Artists, was a co-organizer of the benefit exhibition. The showing took place at the T. Eaton Fine Art Galleries and the Robert Simpson Co. under the patronage of several distinguished families. Lapine who was in serious condition recovered and returned to his easel. In 1939 a second serious accident almost took his life at his South Lake farm near Minden, Ontario.
It was in 1944 that he held his next solo show after a period of eight years. The showing took place at the Malloney Gallery and was reviewed by the Toronto Star as follows, “Andre’s current show is a revel in the luminous pageantry of nature: red foxes at play in a Haliburton forest; colonnades of gray larches etched against splashes of cloud-colours; a sandy high-road among rich blazes of maple foliage; a Whistleresque grey-poplar gleam of ice-cutters; a misty symphony of grays; cattle-herds as naturalistic as his horses used to be… for touches of portraiture, a luminous figure of his mother and a vivid cheerio of Pearce, naturalist in a glorious ensemble of clothes-colours even to the glistening rubber of his overshoes.”
He held subsequent solo shows at Malloney’s. At the age of 84 he died at his home in Minden, Ontario. Lapine is represented in the National Gallery of Canada, the Agnes Etherington Art Centre (Queen’s University, Kingston) and elsewhere, also in many important private collections.
Source: "A Dictionary of Canadian Artists, Volume II”, compiled by Colin S. MacDonald, Canadian Paperbacks Publishing Ltd, Ottawa, 1979
